Celebrating the Birth of Pizza by Honoring Every Parlor in the City

By now, an impromptu mass gathering in a Williamsburg warehouse isn't anything to write home about -- most of the country probably thinks that's just the way hipsters mate. But when a barista told me that some random place nearby was going to host a pizza party -- and get pies from every single New York pizzeria that delivered -- it seemed worth the risk of inadvertent contact with skinny jeans to find out what the organizers were up to and how they were going to pull this off.

"We wanted it to be an egalitarian celebration of pizza that was as comprehensive as possible," says Matt Capucilli, who came up with the idea for the bash. He teamed up with his friend Ronen V, and the two enlisted the assistance of Michael Cirino, the co-founder of A Razor, A Shiny Knife who once threw a party on the L train, to help turn a dream into reality.

Shock Top provided 300 cases of beer, Capucilli rustled up an artist who made portraits with marinara sauce, and Cirino laid down a plan to get the food. Vans were set up at various checkpoints to meet delivery men who would only stick to their territories; the pizza was then relayed to the warehouse, where proper storage facilities kept the pizzas warm. Reggie Watts was there in the flesh.

The event went down on June 11, the day Raffaele Esposito is credited with inventing modern day pizza -- made with tomato sauce, mozarella, and basil -- to impress Queen Margherita.

Partygoers chowed down on slices from high-brow shops like Fornino and low-brow chains like Domino's while partaking of a mix of pizza trivia and history with pizza expert Scott Wiener. Original songs by Jonathan Mann were performed proclaiming why "pizza is the best."

"My favorite thing about the party is that everyone kept coming up to me -- at the party and since then -- and sharing their crazy ideas they want to do," says Ronen V. "Silly, ridiculous, impossible ideas. One by one, I want to make all of them happen." And so look for more parties from these guys in the future -- the team wants to make more events happen.